Mojo,
I don't know how it is now, but you might be interested in TrekWars: The Furry Conflict. Back in the day, at least, it replaced hostility with weird cartoon hirsutedness.
mojo wrote:I know this is going to seem like a stupid question, but as an outsider, I have to wonder where all this hostility came from in the first place?
ASVSesis, Ch. 1:
In the beginning DARPA created a series of tubes. But the tubes were without bandwidth, and void. So the spirit of Al Gore moved upon the face of the tubes.
And Al Gore said "Let there be USENET", and there was USENET. And The Gore increased the bandwidth thereof, and the tubes were fruitful and multiplied.
And on USENET were discussions and debates after their kind. And Al Gore said let there be newsgroups to divide the topics and subjects, and for porn and picture groups, and it was so.
Verily, in this garden of eden were fanboys and geeks. In the image of Al Gore created He them. And in their innocence they gathered, each according to their kind, Trekkies in alt.tv.startrek newsgroups, Warsies in alt.starwars newsgroups. And it was very good.
But lo, serpents brought forth apples of knowledge betwixt the groups, and suddenly both were aware of their animosity. And Al Gore was angry, and did punish them with alt.startrek.vs.starwars, saying "Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy inner bastards, and hast let out thy animosities of which I commanded thee saying "use thy killfilter on that nonsense", cursed is the series of tubes for thy sake; in misery shalt thou debate all the days of thy life. Flames and insults shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt find no peace, for silly fanboy buttholes thou art, and as silly fanboy buttholes shall thou be knownst."
These are the generations of the tubes and ASVS, in the day that Al Gore made USENET and the tubes.
ASVSesis, Ch. 11:
And Wayne's page begat Wong's page, and somewhere in there was begat Boyd's, and also there was January's, but, for want of attention and shekels, to electrons have they returned. Later on the scene came G2k's .edu pages, which begat ST-v-SW.Net, which indirectly begat Strek-v-Swars and its forum, but not before a forum Wong made he it. And so the tribes largely cast themselves out of ASVS, which being naughty in Al Gore's sight, has been severely spambotted.
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And so on. Which has very little to do with your question.
Basically, at ASVS the Warsies kinda developed a bunker mentality, since initially the Trek side had a numerical advantage. But whereas the Trek folks were more into discussion and could be driven from the field with sufficient flaming . . . kinda like now, as often as not . . . the Wars side organized themselves into a united front of snarky twerps, with super-secret decoder ring e-mail lists and whatnot to keep the narratives and arguments straight.
(Some on the Trek side tried to set up the same at one point shortly after I came on the scene, but in my youth and inexperience I thought such tactics were not noble in a rational discussion . . . not fully realizing that they were already being employed by the other side, for whom it was a debate to the death . . . and blew the whistle. C'est la vie.)
Over time, this devolved into a groupthink subculture with very different mores from normal society, which eventually made its home at SDN, with frequent raids elsewhere by its membership. Thus you'll be hard-pressed to find a site where the conversation has not fallen to flaming and vitriol, though Furry Conflict has been largely impervious since they're weird.